


Tales for a Dead Man

by Berenjena



Series: Tales for Two Broken Cognitions [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi becomes a child the fanfic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, I fixed some of the events in the ending, I'LL ADD MORE TAGS AS THIS CONTINUES, M/M, Major Warning over that, Persona 5 Royal Ending Spoilers, but there is a catch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berenjena/pseuds/Berenjena
Summary: After Paradise was Lost, time had to nurse itself back. It did not only left behind confusion over lost days and people and futures that arised anew to then disappear completely, but it also left a small someone behind, someone who only lost more of himself every day it passed.And all the Persona users could do was to watch, because there was nothing else they could do.---"I hate all of this, I hate that my life has been reduced to become a small child for who knows until when. But what I hate the most, Akira, is that the two year old me doesn't hate it, at all."
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Series: Tales for Two Broken Cognitions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881784
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey do you like de-aging? What about permanent de-aging?

Maruki’s Paradise was Hell on Earth. A Palace of sweet nothings, a tempting house of cards. It was everything and nothing at the same time, a promise to stagnation and a nightmare with a dream’s sheared skin.

It reeked of saccharine, and the reluctant thieves found even worse the fact that they were tempted even while knowing the secret behind that delicious aroma.

And even after all what happened what it had to happen, Maruki’s Paradise didn’t stop being hell. When the Phantom Thieves stopped Adam Kadmon and his owner’s unrelenting desire with one single bullet, the whole place started to fall.

“Joker! We have to get out of here!” Panther screamed at her leader while gesturing madly for him to get out from where he was. Joker was furiously dangling with his grappling hook on the metal bars on the upper side of the edification, doing his best to balance himself to go near his friends.

Explosions were everywhere behind him, and he could see from all angles how Paradise was Lost again.

“The whole place is falling down!” – Queen said, her whole body ready to run as fast as she could the very moment Joker fell to the ground. “We have no time left!”

Their car – catcar, catbus, whatever – was prepared and meowing already, the rest of the PT inside and ready to make their escape route as they have always done. And Joker knew all was over. All it was so near to end…

So near…

He could see Akechi looking at him from the catcar’s windows.

Joker couldn’t help but wish that his last fly as a Phantom Thief never stopped. He really, really didn’t want to deal with the aftermath.

And as a dream come true, a fast-as light tentacle emerged from the depths, engulfed his body, cutting the grappling hook and letting him fall where Adam Kadmon, where Takuto Maruki had fallen, too.

Joker could feel the anguished screams of his friends in his head. He could feel the swift tentacle grasping his body, firm yet still as gentle as he knew his doctor always was.

He couldn’t help but feeling kind of glad he had made his wish come reality, in a sense.

He closed his eyes.

He fell.

_“No, you will not go after him! Get the fuck outta here Morgana, I’ll go after him. Take the rest to a safer place, I know what I’m doing. JUST GO AWAY, FOR FUCKS SAKE!”_

_“No, you can’t do that Crow!”_

_“Try me”_

“I’m sorry, Kurusu-kun.”

Akira knew he was not lying. Or half-lying, at the very least. Maruki had always been true to his beliefs, and Azathoth’s tentacle had not damaged him in the least, even if he could feel that his Metaverse powers were dwindling down.

In front of him he could see both his therapist and the messiah in the same man, surrounded by shattered crystals which made the erratic cognition on his body look stranger at the eye. The entire place they were was all what was left of Adam Kadmon spirit and the pieces of his – Maruki’s - failure in form of destroyed lab pieces. Yet he still stood, even with his mask damaged, his staff pillaged, his pride damaged and his fears covering his eyes, he was still –difficultly - standing on his two feet.

Akira forced himself to not run to help him.

“I’m sorry…” Maruki said, faltering on his steps for a second to start up getting near him again. “I just… I just can’t abandon this dream I have. I devoted my life to it, you see? Even when all is broken down, I can’t let go…”

“Doctor Maruki, I know…” Joker said, he could clearly see the shivers that usually came up with tears. And he knew that even if his therapist way of thinking was wrong, their bond was still as tight as it had been once before. But before he could even step out to him, he was promptly stopped by not just the doctor’s pained smile, but the remainder that they had to get the fuck outta the nearest circle of the Laboratory, which was falling and falling and shattering as both’s dreams.

“… Please, Kurusu-kun. Fight this dream off me. I need your help, you are the only one… I know you understand me. Please, Kurusu-kun… I need to get this off myself…” Maruki said, choking his tears off, his attire slowly disappearing like smoke out of his ashes.

His own clothes disappeared too, and Akira wasn’t even sure if it was because the lessening effect of the disappearing Metaverse or just that he had lost every will to fight out of himself.

“Ah, my robes disappeared too. I can’t feel Azathoth anymore… still, I must plead again, Kurusu-kun… Help me.”

He nodded. He never could resist a plead as sincere as that.

They fought.

To be fair, Maruki was the only one who pulled out the punches. Akira – never Joker again – only attacked after the doctor pulled a weak punch from the last remains of strength he had. His own punches were hasty and clumsy, a sham compared to the strong leader skills he had at his control a time that seemed to be far into the past.

It took them a few minutes of their small brawl to tire them out, and Maruki cried his soul off every moment of it.

"A reality… my reality where...no one suffers..." – he mourned, collapsed on the crystalized ground, damaging his body with the small pieces of shattered heavenly glass that touched his skin. “Akira-kun… I’m afraid I can’t run anymore.”

“Doctor…”

“I’m too… scared… of the future. I had everything in front of my eyes, but it seems it was not meant to be. What will it happen to me now, what will be of our future?”

“… All we can do is keep forward, doctor.”

The doctor smiled ruefully, his left cheek still pressed on where it had fallen and still unmovable, his hands relaxed and bleeding freely on the floor. Akira took his small pause as an admission to help him stand.

“… I still can’t understand.”

“Someday you—“

A sudden sound took them out of their reverie. It was Akira’s phone, which took just one ring to put itself onto the speaker – from what it looked to be with some magical power but they both know it was not.

_“Trickster, you need to get out the Palace as fast as possible!”_

“What is the matter, Lavenza??”

_“The Palace is going to explode! I can’t explain much right now, all you need to know is that its product of The God’s Continued Actualizations over the world, now the world is trying to recover itself by making the center of the tamperings explode! You need to get out of there, we don’t know what will happen to you if you get caught into the explosion!”_

Alarmed, Akira, ever the self-sacrificing soul, couldn help but ask. “Is the rest alright? Will it damage the real people???”

 _“It won’t affect the non-Persona users! But please, stop talking and get out of there!”_ Lavenza supplicated, it was the first time the young man could listen to such potent feelings on her voice alone. _“Here, I’ll open the Velvet Room door in a place near you, please enter there as soon as possible!”_

Akira secured the body of the doctor on his back. He was lighter than he what expected of an adult, it seems that he hadn’t even eaten when inside his delusion of a Paradise, and it made sense to him if it was that way. And he ran as fast as he could, following the faint blue light of his Velvet Room. But his stamina was not eternal, and he had been at it against two powerful gods and one frail human for a whole night.

In the end, he was nothing but a frail human too, and he fell on his knees after tripping on some piece of wire. His hands slided on the hard ground, and they bruised with all the small shattered glass splinters that were till showering over them.

He fell again, and couldn’t get up. The doctor’s body fell at his side, shivering.

“I’m… sorry doc…” He said, his teeth chattering in fear. There was nothing else he could do.

“Oh no, you will not.” He listened a certain voice near him say. His owner was at his side, still donned on his ridiculous dark pajamas, his black helmet battered and damaged let it show the most solemn face Akechi had done on his life.

He took both of the man on his arms, and in three movements he ran, he opened the Velvet Room door with one strong kick and shoved both men inside it.

“After all, dead men can tell no tales, am I right? Let the alive be on charge of the future.”

“Akechi, no!”

The door was shoved shut on his face, and all went black.

A potent explosion could be heard from inside, the Time Compression had begun.

And nothing could have stopped it from happening, really.

Fate was not fickle, it was relentless.


	2. Lattice Meld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small intro to Angst Hours.

Before dying, all Akechi could see – could feel - was _white_. A big explosion happened after he shoved both the damn doctor and the Phantom Thieves leader followed by several small ones, then an expansive way that took everything with it. Including himself.

He didn’t feel bad about dying, he had a whole month to come to terms that he was just some kind of strange mishmash between a cognition and a living dead soul. It would be a lie to say that he didn’t care, but he preferred to live and die by his own terms. Even if they involved saving his rival from potential death – he guessed, a deadman dying a second time wouldn’t hurt more than the actual first.

He could not remember his actual moment of death, both of them. Maybe it was just his brain didn’t want to relive the exact moments over again, a way to salvage his small thread of sanity, keeping it medium burnt yet still in one piece. Maybe it was that his body decided to die before receiving the final impact, he had read that people that attempted on their lives tended to die first from the shock of actually killing themselves to then receive the murder weapon. It didn’t matter in the end, he was one foot to be outta the woods and nothing would change that fact.

That was the creed he had died for. The very same creed that abandoned him, going to hell and leaving him behind, in a body that had been his sixteen years ago.

“What the fuck…”

The voice that came out of his lips was the one of a baby. Squeaky as a toy, encompassing a fury that was more alike of a tantrum than the sheer rage and fear that burnt his veins and made his head freeze.

“Akechi! You woke up!” Akira, his rival, was sitting at his side. His face was pale, his eyes were red. He was a mess, just like him.

The boy could not believe it for a moment, he had to look at his rival and friend, for the first time, heads up. He had become so big, everything, everyone had become so big – no, that wasn’t true. It was him who had become small. His clothes consisted of an oversized shirt and a whole bundle of blankets to cover the rest of his body.

He felt as a doll. Or worse. A baby.

He was –had become - a baby, probably a two year old, judging for the size of his small, unblemished hands (they shouldn’t be that pure, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, they)

“Tell me what happened. Now.” He did his best to sound as authoritative as possible. If not, he was sure he would have obeyed his body’s needs to tear up.

He didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. He refused to look weak in front of Akira, in front of the PT.

In front of himself, who wanted to be weak again.

Why did they look alright? Why was he the only one who changed like that?

He hoped Akira had the answers he required.

“Well, first of all.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves said, with a lilt on his voice that did nothing to hide how fucking manic and terrified he was at the situation they were into. How beautiful it would’ve been, if he weren’t the most affected of them all. “Answer me this, first. Where are we?”. What a stupid question. He only agreed to answer it, even if he wanted to bite the hand of the mopehead that was his rival for asking him stupid shit, because he knew he was as terrified as him. And he really, really needed to know what had really happened while he died for the second time. Thinking on the answer, Akechi decided to inspect what he had on hand. He could see the rest of the PT behind his leader, inspecting him as if he were the strangest, stinkiest and most terrifying bug on earth. He could see Morgana on a ratty chair, his tail bandaged, licking his wounds.

He could see a dusty ceiling, the unchanging gray walls.

He could feel the faint smell of curry and coffee on the air, a taste he had learnt to love after so many convenience store foods that had plagued his first life.

The answer was obvious.

“We are on your room.”

“Yes, we are.”

It was strange how the only one who talked to him was still the black mopehead – not and never acting as the leader he had been once. The other Phantom Thieves stood behind, looking at them both while looking restless, as if they were watching an attraction that could suddenly crash and burn. The air felt tense, or maybe they were the tense ones.

“Now, you know what day it is?”

That was a tricky question.

Akechi could not see falling snow as how that February 3rd had been, so he supposed it had to be some days after the fight. Or maybe before? He didn’t know how the entire planet Earth would change when you made a Palace that affected the reality of the world. Reality bending meant breaking most of the important rules their world had, and even them, Persona-Users were an aberration in the system that shouldn’t have existed.

He tried to guess.

“February 5th” – He said, making the sentence sound like a question.

Akira laughed. Laughed and laughed and covered his face entirely, his mania sprouting everywhere. It unnerved his baby body, his “kid” inside. It made him want to scream.

“You see, Akechi… that’s the thing.”

“Today is January 9th. 11 AM.”

“What the _fuck_ ”

“Yanno… Cro—I mean, is weird to see an Akechi-kun so small saying words so foul, huh?” Ann said, trying to lighten the air a bit. While the imbecile blonde monkey (in Goro’s mind) nodded with a strength enough to rattle his small brain up and down, the tense sensation that congealed the air didn’t went away. In fact, it only made the latter remember his situation yet again.

“Shut the hell up. Kurusu, you must know what happened. Spew now.” Akechi’s anger knew no bounds, but his kid body did. He felt feverish on rage, and knew he wouldn’t be able to be awake for more than ten minutes more.

It was better for Akira to be fucking direct.

And it seemed that he caught the note.

“When the explosion happened, Igor informed us what the explosion of Paradise meant for our world.” Akira said, eyes in the sky, never looking at his friend.

_What he didn’t say is that while Igor talked, he was desperately trying to open up the Velvet Room’s door, focused only to get Akechi inside, no matter what the consequences were. Lavenza was probably still angry at him, and maybe he deserved it._

“Playing with reality means playing with unnatural laws that could’ve changed our world forever. It is different than making use of Mementos, which it mostly affected the cognitions of people. Mind over matter has never been more wrong, I guess, haha.” An awkward laugh, a gulp of air, and so Akira continued. “The explosion was meant to break the effect of Mementos over the whole Earth, imploding time and matter to then explode. Doctor Maruki’s reality affected the world for more than a month, and the amount of time that the Earth needed to nurse itself back… in Igor’s words… were…”

_“2.266.737 seconds were lost from this Universe thanks to that Unknown Persona user. Time and matter should be destroyed and regrown at the same time. Normal people shouldn’t feel a thing, and if you are a Persona user but that aren’t located on or near the explosion radius you couldn’t feel a thing, too. Now, that’s different for someone who is inside it.”_

“Igor said that us, Persona users, were bound to disappear when Mementos did, too. An explosion of that size would change us entirely, since it was made to obliterate all what it shouldn’t exist outside the Metaverse, in the first place. Yet still, I suppose you would’ve been the one who would’ve been more affected out of us, anyways.”

“… Hm, is it related to my, ah, life status?”

“Yes… you were, uh, you weren’t even alive, in the first place”

Akira kept hiding his face from him. Akechi desired he could bite those ands for him to stop looking so pathetic when he was the one who had become an entire circus of himself.

“The changes that the explosion made in your body were uh, before the effect of Mementos disappeared completely. I guess… the effects of both couldn’t overlap and thus it let you in the state you are right now.”

“That sounds nice and all, but that doesn’t **_explain why the fuck I became a fucking child_** , Akira.” – He screamed, his squeaky voice becoming high enough to screech Morgana out of his chair.

“That is… That is because…”

_“The second trickster was bordering life and death, and his life linked directly with the Messiah’s power over the world. But his Rebellious Instinct prevailed, and it saved them from a certain ruin. It was also the cause of why he became like this, as the Time Compression, the implosion of Time before expanding over the Earth, saw him as a part of the System, that is, Maruki’s Actualization Power that had to be deleted. And thus, a quantity of time was deleted from his only one month and small days old body, comparable to the seconds this world had lost.”_

“… So, my body was created from scratch by that Damn Doctor even if I had my memories from my last life, and thus the Time Compression almost deleted the time from me, and I was only saved by my Rebellious Instinct?”

“That’s what I understood.”

“And no one of them would’ve been affected this way since you are all *real* humans?”

“…”

“Ah… holy shit…” Akechi said, grabbing his head too, pulling his hair just to feel something else than the immense confusion that made him want to drown. “This is so stupid.”

“FYI f we were in your situation we would just have died” – Futaba said, informative as always. “No one of us would’ve been able to deal with an explosion so big, and thus… uh… um.”

“We believe we must thank you, Akechi.” Yusuke said, with a bow that made the kid inside him laugh a bit. “If it weren’t for you, both Doctor Maruki and Akira would be dead by now.”

“Yes, maybe this was the best ending for us all!” Futaba exclaimed.

“Now we just gotta uh… search for a way to make you grow up again?” Ryuji said, a bit unsure of his words. For being so pathetic, he had good instincts. And Akechi suspected it was because…

… There was no Mementos to search a cure.

By the way Akira went even paler at those words and got up silently from his chair to go down the stairs without a single word, or, from what he had been sure, not even a breath was exhaled from him… he had to know that, too.

“Akechi-kun… why you didn’t tell us about your… situation?” – Makoto asked, opening her mouth from the first time after entering the room. Morgana had told them about how much both of them had suffered after Maruki’s visit on February 2nd, and she’d felt guilty of leaving Crow at his expanses to get both Joker and Maruki alive. She had been too confident on their abilities, and she didn’t know what to do to solve it.

“Would telling you about my situation helped us in something? It was enough trying to deter Joker from the temptations of that man…” The small boy said, dizzy already. He would not be awake for much longer.

“If I just were able to transform into a helicopter…” Morgana sniffed, still cleaning his damaged tail. “All would’ve been easier”

“No, Mona, don’t worry. Cognitions are really difficult to change, and you were already battered.” Haru said, petting his back. Ann followed straight. “It’s alright, all of us are fine, aren’t we?”

Retching sound wailed from the first floor. If they were followed by sobs, no one wanted to recognize them for what they were.

They needed to keep sane, the world had become already too crazy for them youngsters, after all.

“Akechi, you seem tired.” Morgana stated. “Maybe you should go to sleep? Akira said that tomorrow we would check with Lady Lavenza if she knew some way to get you to normality again”.

“I’ll do that… I’m too sleepy. Tomorrow I’ll go home…” – Akechi said, burrowing inside the covers like a small cat.

“Uh, I don’t believe you will be able to be left alone, dude?” Futaba argued. “You are like, two. I—I believe you will have to live with us for a wh—ah, he is already asleep.”

“Let him sleep, Futaba-chan.” Haru said, a gentle smile on her face flourishing while stroking Morgana’s fur. “Tomorrow will be a big day for us. And it may not be the best for everyone… so we need to be on our highest hopes.”

“Yes, we need to rest.” Yusuke said. “We fought all night against Doctor Maruki’s Persona, I for all feel exhausted and hungry. I believe I’m ready for some coffee and curry.”

“How can you be that excited for curry dude, you ain’t listening Akira vomit his heart out in the bath?” Ryuji argued, he was already getting up to help his best friend with his massive freak out.

They were all tired, and it wasn’t even 1 PM. So much had happened and they were already unable to deal with it all. They just could wonder how the very next day – scratch that, few hours were going to treat them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blurb. I started to write at 8 pm and ended up at 3 am. Sorry if the quality went down fast, I wanna burn my neurons writing this before I forget how I was gonna write this chapter.
> 
> Why did Morgana transform into an helicopter btw? Also why tf you can fukin revive dead people but time cannot be rewinded? This ain’t Flint, Time Detective. Fuck that, ill rewind what I want. I ried my best to explain what happened when Akechi was outside. Maybe ill change some parts tho, im to sleepy and maybe commited some serious mistakes. Im like that. But if it were another hour i wouldnt be writing, MY MUSE IS NOCTURNE sorry.
> 
> Hey I wanna write a maruki/shibusawa fanfic someday. Self-indulgent porn and feels and porn and porn. Would you like to see? I got so many ideas for it and theres so little... I have FEELS. I GOT FEELS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
> 
> pls write if u are expecting something etc

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah well someone stole my phone, I got COVID, been working on the health system in a way that leaves me completely tired, sorry other fanfics. I need to get this worm outta my brain.
> 
> Soon.
> 
> Anyways, this is only the prologue. Leave a comment if ur interested pls.
> 
> Also yes, this wasnt beta-ed. I never had a beta for this.


End file.
